Just so you know ahead of time, because it would really stink to ruin the wonderful book…
----------ORDER OF THE PHOENIX: Official SPOILER ALERT!!-----------
I wouldn't read this if you haven't read book six yet.
Author's Note: I've never written HP fanfiction before… I don't own them, by the way. This is Harry's POV, after he's left the wizarding world for good. Tell me what you think.
Martyrdom
I never thought that the world I once spent my summers yearning for would be the world I now wish I had never entered.
From a happy-go-lucky 11 year old to a somber 17 year old, my attitudes and oblivion shock me now as I sit in the midsummer heat. Oh, just to remember the times when I sipped butterbeer and laughed uproariously at Ron and Hermione's bickering. Though my martyr's guise and pitying position kept most from realizing my concealed greed, some saw through.
Though I was temporarily blinded by the flashes and glimmers of the wizarding world, it all seems like a macabre fireworks display to me now. I know that danger resides there. Danger is everywhere… but when one duels with wands and not guns, danger takes on a new meaning. A foolish meaning. Muggles, they call us, but they do not see that they are now the clueless. Playing with time, twisting the laws of gravity… tossing about the meanings of good and evil to fit their magical standards. I saw past them.
It took me six years to realize. Six long years of ignorant arrogance until I truly saw who I was, and the hallowed hall of heroes that then and now seem more like names read at a funeral, a funeral for someone people only pretend to like. The world prefers the unblemished memory, nitpicked and screened for qualities no one wants to realize exist. Through the tempting silver of the pensieve, I saw someone I always wanted to see… and now never want to even think of again. I preferred the memory.
Their world took my parents. Though I no longer put them on their martyr's pedestal, I understand that they must have loved me. I do not love them. They fought unceasingly for a cause that while no doubt was good, threw my own life against the wall to shatter into countless shards. One cut me across my forehead, a reminder of my parent's foolhardy courage. Courage… another word I am sick to the teeth of hearing. Courage killed my parents. Courage killed my godfather. Courage sank its filthy teeth into the minds of Neville's parents, left him to wither. Courage is a word that I would never hope to hear again applied to my name.
I left their world. Ran as far away from Hogwarts as possible, snapped my wand in half and threw it at the tracks in the Underground station. I relish the fact that I swear I could hear it scream, splintered into tiny bits, the phoenix tail feather stuck to the bottom of a dirty metallic subway car. Prophecies be damned – I will not let myself die like my parents, and have my poorer qualities forgotten by the masses that prefer to worship the unblemished hero. I was blemished from the beginning… couldn't they see my scar? Given to me by Voldemort – the infamous collection of consonants and vowels that no one dared to utter. I needed not to stick around to see who got slain in the end, my time is better spent other ways than waiting to see whether you or your worlds greatest enemy is to die first.
I am a businessman now, selling home goods door-to-door. I knot my tie every morning, fold the covers up over my bed, and drink a glass of whiskey when I return home from a hard days work. But among all of my non-regrets and my self-assured banter, there is one vision that sometimes floats up before me as I knock on yet another door, briefcase in hand.
Dumbledore's tear.